From: "Jewish History, Jewish Religion:

The Weight of Three Thousand Years"

by Professor Israel Shahak

THE
FIRST DIFFICULTY in writing about this
subject is that the term 'Jew' has been used during the last 150
years with two rather different meanings. To understand this, let
us imagine ourselves in the year 1780. Then the universally
accepted meaning of the term 'Jew' basically coincided with what
the Jews themselves understood as constituting their own
identity. This identity was primarily religious, but the precepts
of religion governed the details of daily behavior in all aspects
of life, both social and private, among the Jews themselves as
well as in their relation to non-Jews. It was then literally true
that a Jew could not even drink a glass of water in the home of a
non-Jew. And the same basic laws of behavior towards non-Jews
were equally valid from Yemen to New York. Whatever the term by
which the Jews of 1780 may be described - and I do not wish to
enter into a metaphysical dispute about terms like, 'nation' and
'people'1
- it is clear that all Jewish communities at that time were
separate from the non-Jewish societies in the midst of which they
were living.

However, all this was changed by two
parallel processes - beginning in Holland and England, continuing
in revolutionary France and in countries which followed the
example of the French Revolution, and then in the modern
monarchies of the 19th century: the Jews gained a significant
level of individual rights (in some cases full legal equality),
and the legal power of the Jewish community over its members was
destroyed. It should be noted that both developments were
simultaneous, and that the latter is even more important, albeit
less widely known, than the former.

Since the time of the late Roman
Empire, Jewish communities had considerable legal powers over
their members. Not only powers which arise through voluntary
mobilization of social pressure (for example refusal to have any
dealing whatsoever with an excommunicated Jew or even to bury his
body), but a power of naked coercion: to flog, to imprison, to
expel - all this could be inflicted quite legally on an
individual Jew by the rabbinical courts for all kinds of
offenses. In many countries - Spain and Poland are notable
examples - even capital punishment could be and was inflicted,
sometimes using particularly cruel methods such as flogging to
death. All this was not only permitted but positively encouraged
by the state authorities in both Christian and Muslim countries,
who besides their general interest in preserving 'law and order'
had in some cases a more direct financial interest as well. For
example, in Spanish archives dating from the 13th and 14th
centuries there are records of many detailed orders issued by
those most devout Catholic Kings of Castile and Aragon,
instructing their no less devout officials to co-operate with the
rabbis in enforcing observance of the Sabbath by the Jews. Why?
Because whenever a Jew was fined by a rabbinical court for
violating the Sabbath, the rabbis had to hand nine tenths of the
fine over to the king - a very profitable and effective
arrangement. Similarly, one can quote from the responsa
written shortly before 1832 by the famous
Rabbi Moshe Sofer of Pressburg (now Bratislava), in what was then
the autonomous Hungarian Kingdom in the Austrian Empire, and
addressed to Vienna in Austria proper, where the Jews had already
been granted some considerable individual rights.
2 He
laments the fact that since the Jewish congregation in Vienna
lost its powers to punish offenders, the Jews there have become
lax in matters of religious observance, and adds: 'Here in
Pressburg, when I am told that a Jewish shopkeeper dared to open
his shop during the Lesser Holidays, I immediately send a
policeman to imprison him.'

This was the most important social
fact of Jewish existence before the advent of the modern state:
observance of the religious laws of Judaism, as well as their
inculcation through education, were enforced on Jews by physical
coercion, from which one could only escape by conversion to the
religion of the majority, amounting in the circumstances to a
total social break and for that reason very impracticable, except
during a religious crisis.3

However, once the modern state had
come into existence, the Jewish community lost its powers to
punish or intimidate the individual Jew. The bonds of one of the
most closed of 'closed societies', one of the most totalitarian
societies in the whole history of mankind were snapped. This act
of liberation came mostly from outside; although
there were some Jews who helped it from within, these were at
first very few. This form of liberation had very grave
consequences for the future. Just as in the case of Germany
(according to the masterly analysis of A.J.P. Taylor) it was easy
to ally the cause of reaction with patriotism, because in actual
fact individual rights and equality before the law were brought
into Germany by the armies of the French Revolution and of
Napoleon, and one could brand liberty as 'un-German', exactly so
it turned out to be very easy among the Jews, particularly in
Israel, to mount a very effective attack against all the notions
and ideals of humanism and the rule of law (not to say democracy)
as something 'un-Jewish' or 'anti-Jewish' - as indeed they are, in
a historical sense - and as principles which
may be used in the 'Jewish interest', but which have no validity against
the 'Jewish interest', for example when
Arabs invoke these same principles. This has also led - again
just as in Germany and other nations of Mitteleuropa
- to a deceitful, sentimental and
ultra-romantic Jewish historiography, from which all inconvenient
facts have been expunged.

So one will not find in Hannah
Arendt's voluminous writings, whether on
totalitarianism or on Jews, or on both,4 the
smallest hint as to what Jewish society in Germany was really
like in the 18th century: burning of books, persecution of
writers, disputes about the magic powers of amulets, bans on the
most elementary 'non-Jewish' education such as the teaching of
correct German or indeed German written in the Latin alphabet5. Nor can
one find in the numerous English-language 'Jewish histories' the
elementary facts about the attitude of Jewish mysticism (so
fashionable at present in certain quarters) to non-Jews: that
they are considered to be, literally, limbs of Satan, and that
the few non-satanic individuals among them (that is, those who
convert to Judaism) are in reality 'Jewish souls' who got lost
when Satan violated the Holy Lady (Shekhinah or
Matronit, one of the
female components of the Godhead, sister and wife of the younger
male God according to the cabbala) in her heavenly abode. The
great authorities, such as Gershom Scholem, have lent their
authority to a system of deceptions in all the 'sensitive' areas,
the more popular ones being the most dishonest and misleading.

But the social consequence of this
process of liberalization was that, for the first time since
about AD 200, 6 a Jew could be
free to do what he liked, within the bounds of his country's
civil law, without having to pay for this freedom by converting
to another religion. The freedom to learn and read books in
modern languages, the freedom to read and write books in Hebrew
not approved by the rabbis (as any Hebrew or Yiddish book
previously had to be), the freedom to eat non-kosher food, the
freedom to ignore the numerous absurd taboos regulating sexual
life, even the freedom to think - for 'forbidden thoughts' are
among the most serious sins - all these were granted to the Jews
of Europe (and subsequently of other countries) by modern or even
absolutist European regimes, although the latter were at the same
time antisemitic and oppressive. Nicholas I of Russia was a
notorious antisemite and issued many laws against the Jews of his
state. But he also strengthened the forces of 'law and order' in
Russia - not only the secret police but also the regular police
and the gendarmerie - with the consequence that it became
difficult to murder Jews on the order of their rabbis, whereas in
pre-1795 Poland it had been quite easy. 'Official' Jewish history
condemns him on both counts.
For example, in the late 1830s a 'Holy Rabbi' (Tzadik) in a small
Jewish town in the Ukraine ordered the murder of a heretic by
throwing him into the boiling water of the town baths, and
contemporary Jewish sources note with astonishment and horror
that bribery was 'no longer effective' and that not only the
actual perpetrators but also the Holy Man were severely punished.
The Metternich regime of pre-1848 Austria was notoriously
reactionary and quite unfriendly to Jews, but it did not allow
people, even liberal Jewish rabbis, to be poisoned. During 1848,
when the regime's power was temporarily weakened, the first thing
the leaders of the Jewish community in the Galician city of
Lemberg (now Lvov) did with their newly regained freedom was to
poison the liberal rabbi of the city, whom the tiny non-Orthodox
Jewish group in the city had imported from Germany. One of his
greatest heresies, by the way, was the advocacy and actual
performance of the Bar Mitzvah ceremony, which had recently been
invented.

Liberation from Outside

In the last 150 years, the term 'Jew' has therefore
acquired a dual meaning, to the great confusion of some
well-meaning people, particularly in the English-speaking
countries, who imagine that the Jews they meet socially are
'representative' of Jews 'in general'. In the countries of east
Europe as well as in the Arab world, the Jews were liberated from
the tyranny of their own religion and of their own communities by
outside forces, too late and in circumstances too unfavorable for
genuine internalized social change. In most cases, and
particularly in Israel, the old concept of society, the same
ideology - especially as directed towards non-Jews - and the same
utterly false conception of history have been preserved. This
applies even to some of those Jews who joined 'progressive' or
leftist movements. An examination of radical, socialist and
communist parties can provide many examples of disguised Jewish
chauvinists and racists, who joined these parties merely for
reasons of 'Jewish interest' and are, in Israel, in favor of
'anti-Gentile' discrimination. One need only check how many
Jewish 'socialists' have managed to write about the kibbutz
without taking the trouble to mention that it is a racist
institution from which non-Jewish citizens of Israel are
rigorously excluded, to see that the phenomenon we are alluding
to is by no means uncommon.7

Avoiding labels based on ignorance
or hypocrisy, we thus see that the word 'Jewry' and its cognates
describe two different and even contrasting social groups, and
because of current Israeli politics the continuum between the two
is disappearing fast. On the one hand there is the traditional
totalitarian meaning discussed above; on the other hand there are
Jews by descent who have internalized the complex of ideas which
Karl Popper has called 'the open society'. (There are also some,
particularly in the USA, who have not internalized these ideas,
but try to make a show of acceptance.)

It is important to note that all the
supposedly 'Jewish characteristics' - by which I mean the traits
which vulgar so-called intellectuals in the West attribute to
'the Jews' - are modern characteristics, quite unknown during
most of Jewish history, and appeared only when the totalitarian
Jewish community began to lose its power. Take, for example, the
famous Jewish sense of humor. Not only is humor very rare in
Hebrew literature before the 19th century (and is only found
during few periods, in countries where the Jewish upper class was
relatively free from the rabbinical yoke, such as Italy between
the 14th and 17th centuries or Muslim Spain) but humor and jokes
are strictly forbidden by the Jewish religion - except,
significantly, jokes against other religions. Satire against
rabbis and leaders of the community was never internalized by
Judaism, not even to a small extent, as it was in Latin
Christianity. There were no Jewish comedies, just as there were
no comedies in Sparta, and for a similar reason.8
Or take the love of learning. Except for a purely religious
learning, which was itself in a debased and degenerate state, the
Jews of Europe (and to a somewhat lesser extent also of the Arab
countries) were dominated, before about 1780, by a supreme
contempt and hate for all learning (excluding the Talmud and
Jewish mysticism). Large parts of the Old Testament, all
nonliturgical Hebrew poetry, most books on Jewish philosophy were
not read and their very names were often anathematized. Study of
all languages was strictly forbidden, as was the study of
mathematics and science. Geography,9
history - even Jewish history - were completely unknown. The
critical sense, which is supposedly so characteristic of Jews,
was totally absent, and nothing was so forbidden, feared and
therefore persecuted as the most modest innovation or the most
innocent criticism.

It was a world sunk in the most
abject superstition, fanaticism and ignorance, a world in which
the preface to the first work on geography in Hebrew (published
in 1803 in Russia) could complain that very many great rabbis
were denying the existence of the American continent and saying
that it is 'impossible'. Between that world and what is often
taken in the West to 'characterize' Jews there is nothing in
common except the mistaken name.

However, a great many present-day
Jews are nostalgic for that world, their lost paradise, the
comfortable closed society from which they were not so much
liberated as expelled. A large part of the Zionist movement
always wanted to restore it - and this part has gained the upper
hand. Many of the motives behind Israeli politics, which so
bewilder the poor confused western 'friends of Israel', are
perfectly explicable once they are seen simply as reaction,
reaction in the political sense which this word has had for the
last two hundred years: a forced and in many respects innovative,
and therefore illusory, return to the closed society of the
Jewish past.

Obstacles to Understanding

Historically it can be shown that a closed society is
not interested in a description of itself, no doubt because any
description is in part a form of critical analysis and so may
encourage critical 'forbidden thoughts'. The more a society
becomes open, the more it is interested in reflecting, at first
descriptively and then critically, upon itself, its present
working as well as its past. But what happens when a faction of
intellectuals desires to drag a society, which has already opened
up to a considerable extent, back to its previous totalitarian,
closed condition? Then the very means of the former progress -
philosophy, the sciences, history and especially sociology -
become the most effective instruments of the 'treason of the
intellectuals'. They are perverted in order to serve as devices
of deception, and in the process they degenerate.

Classical Judaism 10
had little interest in describing or explaining itself to the
members of its own community, whether educated (in talmudic
studies) or not.11
It is significant that the writing of Jewish history, even in the
driest annalistic style, ceased completely from the time of
Josephus Flavius (end of first century) until the Renaissance,
when it was revived for a short time in Italy and in other
countries where the Jews were under strong Italian influence.12
Characteristically, the rabbis feared Jewish even more than
general history, and the first modern book on history published
in Hebrew (in the 16th century) was entitled History of the Kings
of France and of the Ottoman Kings. It was followed by some
histories dealing only with the persecutions that Jews had been
subjected to. The first book on Jewish history proper l3
(dealing with ancient times) was promptly banned and suppressed
by the highest rabbinical authorities, and did not reappear
before the 19th century. The rabbinical authorities of east
Europe furthermore decreed that all non-talmudic studies are to
be forbidden, even when nothing specific could be found in them
which merits anathema, because they encroach on the time that
should be employed either in studying the Talmud or in making
money - which should be used to subsidize talmudic scholars. Only
one loophole was left, namely the time that even a pious Jew must
perforce spend in the privy. In that unclean place sacred studies
are forbidden, and it was therefore permitted to read history
there, provided it was written in Hebrew and was completely
secular, which in effect meant that it must be exclusively
devoted to non-Jewish subjects. (One can imagine that those few
Jews of that time who - no doubt tempted by Satan - developed an
interest in the history of the French kings were constantly
complaining to their neighbors about the constipation they were
suffering from ...) As a consequence, two hundred years ago the
vast majority of Jews were totally in the dark not only about the
existence of America but also about Jewish history and Jewry's
contemporary state; and they were quite content to remain so.

A Totalitarian History

There was however one area in which they were not
allowed to remain self-contented - the area of Christian attacks
against those passages in the Talmud and the talmudic literature
which are specifically anti-Christian or more generally
anti-Gentile. It is important to note that this challenge
developed relatively late in the history of Christian-Jewish
relations - only from the 13th century on. (Before that time, the
Christian authorities attacked Judaism using either Biblical or
general arguments, but seemed to be quite ignorant as to the
contents of the Talmud.) The Christian campaign against the
Talmud was apparently brought on by the conversion to
Christianity of Jews who were well versed in the Talmud and who
were in many cases attracted by the development of Christian
philosophy, with its strong Aristotelian (and thus universal)
character.14

It must be admitted at the outset
that the Talmud and the talmudic literature - quite apart from
the general anti-Gentile streak that runs through them, which
will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 5 - contain very
offensive statements and precepts directed specifically against
Christianity. For example, in addition to a series of scurrilous
sexual allegations against Jesus, the Talmud states that his
punishment in hell is to be immersed in boiling excrement - a
statement not exactly calculated to endear the Talmud to devout
Christians. Or one can quote the precept according to which Jews
are instructed to burn, publicly if possible, any copy of the New
Testament that comes into their hands. (This is not only still in
force but actually practiced today; thus on 23 March 1980
hundreds of copies of the New Testament were publicly and
ceremonially burnt in Jerusalem under the auspices of Yad
Le'akhim, a Jewish religious organization subsidized by the
Israeli Ministry of Religions.)

Anyway, a powerful attack, well
based in many points, against talmudic Judaism developed in
Europe from the 13th century. We are not referring here to
ignorant calumnies, such as the blood libel, propagated by
benighted monks in small provincial cities, but to serious
disputations held before the best European universities of the
time and on the whole conducted as fairly as was possible under
medieval circumstances.15

What was the Jewish - or rather the
rabbinical - response? The simplest one was the ancient weapon of
bribery and string-pulling. In most European countries, during
most of the time, anything could be fixed by a bribe. Nowhere was
this maxim more true than in the Rome of the Renaissance popes.
The Edigio Princeps of the complete Code of Talmudic Law,
Maimonides' Mishneh Torah - replete not only with the most
offensive precepts against all Gentiles but also with explicit
attacks on Christianity and on Jesus (after whose name the author
adds piously, 'May the name of the wicked perish') - was
published unexpurgated in Rome in the year 1480 under Sixtus IV,
politically a very active pope who had a constant and urgent need
for money. (A few years earlier, the only older edition of The
Golden Ass by Apulcius from which the violent attack on
Christianity had not been removed was also published in Rome.)
Alexander VI Borgia was also very liberal in this respect.

Even during that period, as well as
before it, there were always countries in which for a time a wave
of anti-Talmud persecution set in. But a more consistent and
widespread onslaught came with the Reformation and Counter
Reformation, which induced a higher standard of intellectual
honesty as well as a better knowledge of Hebrew among Christian
scholars. From the 16th century, all the talmudic literature,
including the Talmud itself, was subjected to Christian
censorship in various countries. In Russia this went on until
1917. Some censors, such as in Holland, were more lax, while
others were more severe; and the offensive passages were expunged
or modified.

All modern studies on Judaism,
particularly by Jews, have evolved from that
conflict, and to this day they bear the unmistakable marks of
their origin: deception, apologetics or hostile polemics,
indifference or even active hostility to the pursuit of truth.
Almost all the so-called Jewish studies in
Judaism, from that time to this very day,
are polemics against an external enemy rather than an internal
debate.

It is important to note that this
was initially the character of historiography in all known
societies (except ancient Greece, whose early liberal historians
were attacked by later sophists for their insufficient
patriotism!). This was true of the early Catholic and Protestant
historians, who polemicized against each other. Similarly, the
earliest European national histories are imbued with the crudest
nationalism and scorn for all other, neighboring nations. But
sooner or later there comes a time when an attempt is made to
understand one's national or religious adversary and at the same
time to criticize certain deep and important aspects of the
history of one's own group; and both these developments go
together. Only when historiography becomes - as Pieter Geyl put
it so well - 'a debate without end' rather than a continuation of
war by historiographic means, only then does a humane
historiography, which strives for both accuracy and fairness,
become possible; and it then turns into one of the most powerful
instruments of humanism and self-education.

It is for this reason that modern
totalitarian regimes rewrite history or punish historians.16
When a whole society tries to return to totalitarianism, a
totalitarian history is written, not because of compulsion from
above but under pressure from below, which is much more
effective. This is what happened in Jewish history, and this
constitutes the first obstacle we have to surmount.

Defense Mechanisms

What were the detailed mechanisms (other than bribery)
employed by Jewish communities, in cooperation with outside
forces, in order to ward off the attack on the Talmud and other
religious literature? Several methods can be distinguished, all
of them having important political consequences reflected in
current Israeli policies. Although it would be tedious to supply
in each case the Beginistic or Labour-zionist parallel, I am sure
that readers who are somewhat familiar with the details of Middle
East politics will themselves be able to notice the resemblance.

The first mechanism I shall discuss
is that of sereptitious defiance, combined
with outward compliance. As explained above,
talmudic passages directed against Christianity or against
non-Jews l7
had to go or to be modified - the pressure was too strong. This
is what was done: a few of the most offensive passages were
bodily removed from all editions printed in Europe after the
mid-16th century. In all other passages, the expressions
'Gentile', 'non-Jew', 'stranger' (goy, eino
yehudi, nokhri) - which appear in all early
manuscripts and printings as well as in all editions published in
Islamic countries - were replaced by terms such as 'idolator',
'heathen' or even 'Canaanite' or 'Samaritan', terms which could
be explained away but which a Jewish reader could recognize as
euphemisms for the old expressions.

As the attack mounted, so the
defence became more elaborate, sometimes with lasting tragic
results. During certain periods the Tsarist Russian censorship
became stricter and, seeing the above mentioned euphemisms for
what they were, forbade them too. Thereupon the rabbinical
authorities substituted the terms 'Arab' or 'Muslim' (in Hebrew, Yishma'eli
- which means both) or occasionally
'Egyptian', correctly calculating that the Tsarist authorities
would not object to this kind of abuse. At the same time, lists
of Talmudic Omissions were
circulated in manuscript form, which explained all the new terms
and pointed out all the omissions. At times, a general disclaimer
was printed before the title page of each volume of talmudic
literature, solemnly declaring, sometimes on oath, that all
hostile expressions in that volume are intended only against the
idolators of antiquity, or even against the long-vanished
Canaanites, rather than against 'the peoples in whose land we
live'. After the British conquest of India, some rabbis hit on
the subterfuge of claiming that any particularly outrageous
derogatory expression used by them is only intended against the
Indians. Occasionally the
aborigines of Australia were also added as whipping-boys.

Needless to say, all this was a
calculated lie from beginning to end; and following the
establishment of the State of Israel, once the rabbis felt
secure, all the offensive passages and expressions were restored
without hesitation in all new editions. (Because of the enormous
cost which a new edition involves, a considerable part of the
talmudic literature, including the Talmud itself, is still being
reprinted from the old editions. For this reason, the above
mentioned Talmudic Omissions have
now been published in Israel in a cheap printed edition, under
the title Hesronot Shas.) So
now one can read quite freely - and Jewish children are actually
taught - passages such as that l8
which commands every Jew, whenever passing near a cemetery, to
utter a blessing if the cemetery is Jewish, but to curse the
mothers of the dead 19
if it is non-Jewish. In the old editions the curse was omitted,
or one of the euphemisms was substituted for 'Gentiles'. But in
the new Israeli edition of Rabbi Adin Steinsalz (complete with
Hebrew explanations and glosses to the Aramaic parts of the text,
so that schoolchildren should be in no doubt as to what they are
supposed to say) the unambiguous words 'Gentiles' and 'strangers'
have been restored.

Under external pressure, the rabbis
deceptively eliminated or modified certain passages - but not the
actual practices which are prescribed in them. It is a fact which
must be remembered, not least by Jews themselves, that for
centuries our totalitarian society has employed barbaric and
inhumane customs to poison the minds of its members, and it is
still doing so. (These inhumane customs cannot be explained away
as mere reaction to antisemitism or persecution of Jews: they are
gratuitous barbarities directed against each and every human
being. A pious Jew
arriving for the first time in Australia, say, and chancing to
pass near an Aboriginal graveyard, must - as an act of worship of
'God' - curse the mothers of the dead buried there.)
Without facing this real social fact, we all become parties to
the deception and accomplices to the process of poisoning the
present and future generations, with all the consequences of this
process.

The Deception Continues

Modern scholars of Judaism have not only continued the
deception, but have actually improved upon the old rabbinical
methods, both in impudence and in mendacity. I omit here the
various histories of antisemitism, as unworthy of serious
consideration, and shall give just three particular examples and
one general example of the more modern 'scholarly' deceptions.

In 1962, a part of the Maimonidean
Code referred to above, the so-called Book of Knowledge, which
contains the most basic rules of Jewish faith and practice, was
published in Jerusalem in a bilingual edition, with the English
translation facing the Hebrew text.20
The latter has been restored to its original purity, and the
command to exterminate Jewish infidels appears in it in full: 'It
is a duty to exterminate them with one's own hands.' In the
English translation this is somewhat softened to: 'It is a duty
to take active measures to destroy them.' But then the Hebrew
text goes on to specify the prime examples of 'infidels' who must
be exterminated: 'Such as Jesus of Nazareth and his pupils, and
Tzadoq and Baitos 21 and their pupils,
may the name of the wicked rot'. Not one 'word of this appears in
the English text on the facing page (78a). And, even more
significant, in spite of the wide circulation of this book among
scholars in the English-speaking countries, not one of them has,
as far as I know, protested against this glaring deception.

The second example comes from the
USA, again from an English translation of a book by Maimonides.
Apart from his work on the codification of the Talmud, he was
also a philosopher and his Guide to the
Perplexed is justly considered to be the
greatest work of Jewish religious philosophy and is widely read
and used even today. Unfortunately,
in addition to his attitude towards non-Jews generally and
Christians in particular, Maimonides was also an anti-Black
racist. Towards the end of the Guide, in
a crucial chapter (book III, chapter 51) he discusses how various
sections of humanity can attain the supreme religious value, the
true worship of God. Among those who are incapable of even
approaching this are:

"Some
of the Turks [i.e., the Mongol race] and the nomads in
the North, and the Blacks and the nomads in the South,
and those who resemble them in our climates. And their
nature is like the nature of mute animals, and according
to my opinion they are not on the level of human beings,
and their level among existing things is below that of a
man and above that of a monkey, because they have the
image and the resemblance of a man more than a monkey
does."

Now, what does one do with such a
passage in a most important and necessary work of Judaism? Face
the truth and its consequences? God forbid! Admit (as so many
Christian scholars, for example, have done in similar
circumstances) that a very important Jewish authority held also
rabid anti-Black views, and by this admission make an attempt at
self-education in real humanity? Perish the thought. I can almost
imagine Jewish scholars in the USA consulting among themselves,
'What is to be done?' - for the book had to be translated, due to
the decline in the knowledge of Hebrew among American Jews.
Whether by consultation or by individual inspiration, a happy
solution' was found: in the popular American translation of the
Guide by one Friedlander, first published as far back as 1925 and
since then reprinted in many editions, including several in
paperback, the Hebrew word Kushi,,:, which means Blacks, was
simply transliterated and appears as 'Kushites', a word which
means nothing to those who have no knowledge of Hebrew, or to
whom an obliging rabbi will not give an oral explanation.22During
all these years, not a word has been said to point out the
initial deception or the social facts underlying its continuation
- and this throughout the excitement of Martin Luther King's
campaigns, which were supported by so many rabbis, not to mention
other Jewish figures, some of whom must have been aware of the
anti-Black racist attitude which forms part of their Jewish
heritage.23

Surely
one is driven to the hypothesis that quite a few of Martin Luther
King's rabbinical supporters were either anti-Black racists who
supported him for tactical reasons of 'Jewish interest' (wishing
to win Black support for American Jewry and for Israel's
policies) or were accomplished hypocrites, to the point of
schizophrenia, capable of passing very rapidly from a hidden
enjoyment of rabid racism to a proclaimed attachment to an
anti-racist struggle - and back - and back again.

The third example comes from a work
which has far less serious scholarly intent - but is all the more
popular for that: The Joys of Yiddish by Leo Rosten. This
light-hearted work - first published in the USA in 1968, and
reprinted in many editions, including several times as a Penguin
paperback - is a kind of glossary of Yiddish words often used by
Jews or even non-Jews in English-speaking countries. For each
entry, in addition to a detailed definition and more or less
amusing anecdotes illustrating its use, there is also an
etymology stating (quite accurately, on the whole) the language
from which the word came into Yiddish and its meaning in that
language. The entry Shaygets
- whose main meaning is 'a Gentile boy or young man - is an
exception: there the etymology cryptically states 'Hebrew
Origin', without giving the form or meaning of the original
Hebrew word. However, under the entry Shiksa
- the feminine form of Shaygets
- the author does give the original Hebrew word, sheqetz
(or, in his transliteration, sheques)
and defines its Hebrew meaning as 'blemish'. This is a bare-faced
lie, as every speaker of Hebrew knows. The Megiddo
Modern Hebrew-English Dictionary, published
in Israel, correctly defines shegetz as follows: 'unclean animal;
loathsome creature, abomination (colloquial - pronounced
shaygets) wretch, unruly youngster; Gentile youngster'.

My final, more general example is,
if possible, even more shocking than the others. It concerns the
attitude of the Hassidic movement towards non-Jews. Hassidism - a
continuation (and debasement!) of Jewish mysticism - is still a
living movement, with hundreds of thousands of active adherents
who are fanatically devoted to their 'holy rabbis', some of whom
have acquired a very considerable political influence in Israel,
among the leaders of most parties and even more so in the higher
echelons of the army.

What, then, are the views of this
movement concerning non-Jews? As an example, let us take the
famous Hatanya, fundamental book of the Habbad movement, one of
the most important branches of Hassidism. According to this book,
all non-Jews are totally satanic creatures 'in whom there is
absolutely nothing good'. Even a non-Jewish embryo is
qualitatively different from a Jewish one. The very existence of
a non-Jew is 'non-essential', whereas all of creation was created
solely for the sake of the Jews.

This book is circulated in countless
editions, and its ideas are further propagated in the numerous
'discourses' of the present hereditary Fuhrer of Habbad, the
so-called Lubavitcher rabbi, M.M. Schneurssohn, who leads this
powerful world-wide organization from his New York headquarters.
In Israel these ideas are widely disseminated among the public at
large, in the schools and in the army. (According to the
testimony of Shulamit Aloni, Member of the Knesset, this Habbad
propaganda was particularly stepped up before Israel's invasion
of Lebanon in March 1978, in order to induce military doctors and
nurses to withhold medical help from 'Gentile wounded'. This
Nazi-like advice did not refer specifically to Arabs or
Palestinians, but simply to 'Gentiles', goyim.)
A former Israeli President, Shazar, was an ardent adherent of
Habbad, and many top Israeli and American politicians - headed by
Prime Minister Begin - publicly courted and supported it. This,
in spite of the considerable unpopularity of the Lubavitcher
rabbi - in Israel he is widely criticized because he refuses to
come to the Holy Land even for a visit and keeps himself in New
York for obscure messianic reasons, while in New York his
anti-Black attitude is notorious.

The fact that, despite
these pragmatic difficulties, Habbad can be publicly
supported by so many top political figures owes much to the
thoroughly disingenuous and misleading treatment by almost all
scholars who have written about the Hassidic movement and its
Habbad branch. This applies particularly to all who have written
or are writing about it in English. They suppress the glaring
evidence of the old Hassidic texts as well as the latter-day
political implications that follow from them, which stare in the
face of even a casual reader of the Israeli Hebrew press, in
whose pages the Lubavitcher rabbi and other Hassidic leaders
constantly publish the most rabid bloodthirsty statements and
exhortations against all Arabs.

A chief deceiver in this case, and a
good example of the power of the deception, was Martin Buber. His
numerous works eulogizing the whole Hassidic movement (including
Habbad) never so much as hint at the real doctrines of Hassidism
concerning non-Jews. The crime of deception is all the greater in
view of the fact that Buber's eulogies of Hassidism were first
published in German during the period of the rise of German
nationalism and the accession of Nazism to power. But while
ostensibly opposing Nazism, Buber glorified a movement holding
and actually teaching doctrines about non-Jews not unlike the
Nazi doctrines about Jews. One could of course argue that the
Hassidic Jews of seventy or fifty years ago were the victims, and
a 'white lie' favoring a victim is excusable. But the
consequences of deception are incalculable. Buber's works were
translated into Hebrew, were made a powerful element of the
Hebrew education in Israel, have greatly increased the power of
the blood-thirsty Hassidic leaders, and have thus been an
important factor in the rise of Israeli chauvinism and hate of
all non-Jews. If we think about the many human beings who died of
their wounds because Israeli army nurses, incited by Hassidic
propaganda, refused to tend them, then a heavy onus for their
blood lies on the head of Martin Buber.

I must mention here that in his
adulation of Hassidism Buber far surpassed other Jewish scholars,
particularly those writing in Hebrew (or, formerly, in Yiddish)
or even in European languages but purely for a Jewish audience.
In questions of internal Jewish interest, there had once been a
great deal of justified criticism of the Hassidic movement. Their
mysogynism (much more extreme than that common to all Jewish
Orthodoxy), their indulgence in alcohol, their fanatical cult of
their hereditary 'holy rabbis' who extorted money from them, the
numerous superstitions peculiar to them - these and many other
negative traits were critically commented upon. But Buber's
sentimental and deceitful romantization has won the day,
especially in the USA and Israel, because it was in tune with the
totalitarian admiration of anything 'genuinely Jewish' and
because certain 'left' Jewish circles in which Buber had a
particularly great influence have adopted this position.

Nor was Buber alone in his attitude,
although in my opinion he was by far the worst in the evil he
propagated and the influence he has left behind him. There was
the very influential sociologist and biblical scholar, Yehezkiel
Kaufman, an advocate of genocide on the model of the Book of
Joshua, the idealist philosopher Hugo Shmuel Bergman, who as far
back as 1914-15 advocated the expulsion of all Palestinians to
Iraq, and many others. All were outwardly 'dovish', but employed
formulas which could be manipulated in the most extreme anti-Arab
sense, all had tendencies to that religious mysticism which
encourages the propagation of deceptions, and all seemed to be
gentle persons who, even when advocating expulsion, racism and
genocide, seemed incapable of hurting a fly - and just for this
reason the effect of their deceptions was the greater.

It is against the glorification of
inhumanity, proclaimed not only by the rabbis but by those who
are supposed to be the greatest and certainly the most
influential scholars of Judaism, that we have to struggle; and it
is against those modern successors of the false prophets and
dishonest priests that we have to repeat even in the face of an
almost unanimous opinion within Israel and among the majority of
Jews in countries such as the USA, Lucretius' warning against
surrendering one's judgement to the declamations of religious
leaders: Tantuii: religio potuit suadere malorum - 'To such
heights of evil are men driven by religion.' Religion is not
always (as Marx said) the opium of the people, but it can often
be so, and when it is used in this sense by prevaricating and
misrepresenting its true nature, the scholars and intellectuals
who perform this task take on the character of opium smugglers.

But we can derive from this analysis
another, more general conclusion about the most effective and
horrific means of compulsion to do evil, to cheat and to deceive
and, while keeping one's hands quite clean of violence, to
corrupt whole peoples and drive them to oppression and murder.
(For there can no longer be any doubt that the most horrifying
acts of oppression in the West Bank are motivated by Jewish
religious fanaticism.) Most people seem to assume that the worst
totalitarianism employs physical coercion, and would refer to the
imagery of Orwell's 1984 for a model illustrating such a regime.
But it seems to me that this common view is greatly mistaken, and
that the intuition of Isaac Asimov, in whose science fiction the
worst oppression is always internalized, is the more true to the
dangers of human nature. Unlike Stalin's tame scholars, the
rabbis - and even more so the scholars attacked here, and with
them the whole mob of equally silent middlebrows such as writers,
journalists, public figures, who lie and deceive more than them -
are not facing the danger of death or concentration camp, but
only social pressure; they lie out of patriotism because they
believe that it is their duty to lie for what they conceive to be
the Jewish interest. They are patriotic liars, and it is the same
patriotism which reduces them to silence when confronted with the
discrimination and oppression of the Palestinians.

In the present case we are also
faced with another group loyalty, but one which comes from
outside the group, and which is sometimes even more mischievous.
Very many non-Jews (including Christian clergy and religious
laymen, as well as some marxists from all marxist groups) hold
the curious opinion that one way to 'atone' for the persecution
of Jews is not to speak out against evil perpetrated by Jews but
to participate in 'white lies' about them. The crude accusation
of 'antisemitism' (or, in the case of Jews, 'self-hate') against
anybody who protests at the discrimination of Palestinians or who
points out any fact about the Jewish religion or the Jewish past
which conflicts with the 'approved version' comes with greater
hostility and force from non-Jewish 'friends of the Jews' than
from Jews. It is the existence and great influence of this group
in all western countries, and particularly in the USA (as well as
the other English-speaking countries) which has allowed the
rabbis and scholars of Judaism to propagate their lies not only
without opposition but with considerable help.

In fact, many professed
'anti-stalinists' have merely substituted another idol for their
worship, and tend to support Jewish racism and fanaticism with
even greater ardor and dishonesty than were found among the most
devoted stalinists in the past. Although this phenomenon of blind
and stalinistic support for any evil, so long as it is 'Jewish',
is particularly strong from 1945, when the truth about the
extermination of European Jewry became known, it is a mistake to
suppose that it began only then. On the contrary, it dates very
far back, particularly in social-democratic circles. One of
Marx's early friends, Moses Hess, widely known and respected as
one of the first socialists in Germany, subsequently revealed
himself as an extreme Jewish racist, whose views about the 'pure
Jewish race' published in 1858 were not unlike comparable bilge
about the 'pure Aryan race'. But the German socialists, who
struggled against German racism, remained silent about their
Jewish racism.

In 1944, during the actual struggle
against Hitler, the British Labor Party approved a plan for the
expulsion of Palestinians from Palestine, which was similar to
Hitler's early plans (up to about 1941) for the Jews. This plan
was approved under the pressure of Jewish members of the party's
leadership, many of whom have displayed a stronger 'kith and kin'
attitude to every Israeli policy than the Conservative 'kith and
kin' supporters of Ian Smith ever did. But stalinistic taboos on
the left are stronger in Britain than on the right, and there is
virtually no discussion even when the Labor Party supports
Begin's government.

In the USA a similar situation
prevails, and again the American liberals are the worst.

This is not the place to explore all
the political consequences of this situation, but we must face
reality: in our struggle against the racism and fanaticism of the
Jewish religion, our greatest enemies will be not only the Jewish
racists (and users of racism) but also those non-Jews who in
other areas are known - falsely in my opinion - as
'progressives'. jewhis2.htmPrevious PageNext Page

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